xILOVEHARDCORESXEx

Just recently, I processed a box of CDs from various hardcore labels, though mostly from Spook City Records and Facedown Records and it dawned on me that hardcore bands have the worst, trite, idiotic names in the entire of genre of popular music. This also includes Bay Area/Southern rap and country. Here's a list of some of the bands whose information I had to enter:

Blood In Blood Out (by the way, this is the name of a bad ass Mexican gang movie)
Blood For Blood
Nerve Gas Tragedy
Fight Night
Let It Die
Inked In Blood
xLooking Forwardx
Bloody Sunday

Those kids who made the "This Is You aka The Scene Sucks" videos were right to lampoon hardcore kids all along. Well, seriously intense hardcore kids anyway. The kind who don't listen to anything else but "RARRRRRWWWGGGGGG" (imagine that with a deep, Cookie Monster-esque growl) and really childish "breakdowns" which usually consist of open chord chugging.

Don't get me wrong, I like hardcore bands, but I've just heard so much of it that there should be something relatively unique about the way they play to really catch my attention. It seems that generic hardcore (such as the bands listed above) rely on the following:

1. Being straight edge (i.e. no boozin', druggin', and over sexin')
(I have a whole article I'm working on about this...coming soon)
1a. X'ing up their hands and/or names
2. Having a "crew."
3. Breakdowns (also known as "the chugging part")
4. Dancing/beating people up.
5. Having names that depict images of death, blood, destruction, betrayal, God (or G-D, for all my Hebrew peeps), Satan, children, irony, etc.

Yeah, pretty short list, so you can bet that stretched between the hundreds or thousands of hardcore bands out there, there isn't much to say anymore.

After finishing up that box of hardcore CDs, I thought that I should get in the business of selling hardcore bands their names, having been in a few generic sounding hardcore bands myself. Below I have a sample list of names that you may borrow if you wish:

Catcher In the Die
Blood Machine
Die Before Failure
Rotting Flesh Of The Son
Vultures Smell Blood
Bleed Your Wound
xI'll Never Drinkx
Corpse Like Romance
Kill You XXX
Bloody Sins
The Ghost Of The Priest
xBetrayal Huntersx

Hopefully by now you're either a) done laughing or b) done being angry. So here's a list of hardcore bands worth checking out:

Fall River
Since By Man
Botch
Darkest Hour
Coalesce
The Esoteric